Re: Intro and question
Faber Fedor <[email protected]>
| Newsgroups | gmane.comp.misc.free-software-business |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
On Fri, Feb 28, 2003 at 08:12:12AM -0800, DV Henkel-Wallace wrote: > On Friday, Feb 28, 2003, at 07:13 America/Los_Angeles, Faber Fedor > wrote: How do you figure I'm in Los Angeles? > >On Thu, Feb 27, 2003 at 12:18:22PM -0800, DV Henkel-Wallace wrote: > > > >>You have several potential sources of money: Different people use > >>different schemes; personally I like the last two best [your customers > >>and your time]. > > > >I agree with you. But I don't see how I can use my customers to grow > >my > >business. (Even asking for referrals hasn't gotten any bites!) > > Referrals is one way. References is another. Every one of them will be an enthusiastic reference, but none of them are referring me to other clients. > But do you have repeat business? On the consulting side, all of my clients save two are repeat customers. Have been for years. The two who aren't, well, one is out of business and the other one ripped me off. > The second-easiest way to get your customers to fund your > business is to ask them to pay enough up front for you to bring someone > aboard right away. This of course works better if you've already done > one project for that same customer. Perhaps I should have phrased this > as "fund it out of cash flow" but that's a term that's somewhat obscure > to many people. Hmm, I'll try that at my next meeting; I will hopefully close the deal on three projects at that time. > If you're not getting many referrals nor much followon business, > perhaps you should specialise vertically (Medical offices, print shops, > insurance agents, whatever). I've been toying with that idea, but I don't know enough about any vertical market to know where to go or, more importantly, to know which will be interesting and profitable. > So see: you're getting your SCORE advice without the government being > involved! Good! The less the Guv'mint is involved, the better. :-) -- Regards, Faber Linux New Jersey: Open Source Solutions for New Jersey http://www.linuxnj.com